When taking small children out to eat, providing a sanitary surface to eat from and keeping toys, pacifiers, etc off the dirty floor are just two issues that concern parents today. Even in a home, keeping an area where a child eats clean and their toys off the floor is difficult. With these concerns, a portable placemat with straps is useful to allow the child to eat off a clean, sanitary surface and keep items contained by the strap from falling onto a floor. Also, by having a placemat that is reusable, keeps unneeded waste from the landfills. Many placemats offer the ability to be placed in a bag to be transported, but few are reusable. Popular sanitary placemats are for one time use and must be disposed of. Those types are not cost effective. Nor are they environmentally friendly. There are also other types of placemats that can be reused. However, they may not have a cleaner surface than the table that they are covering and they do not have the ability to constrain toys, pacifiers, etc. The reason is the plastic or rubber material that they are made of. If the purchaser does not clean the surface in a proper and timely manner, bacteria can begin to grow in the porous material that can only be killed with harsh chemicals. Traditional placemats cannot be adhered to a surface and can easily be moved by a child defeating the purpose of the mat.
Placemats that are made of cellulosic material with adhesive backings (Patent US 2002/0160184 Cho) work well in keeping a surface sanitary but do not allow the purchaser to reuse the placemat. If a liquid was to spill on the surface of the mat, the liquid would spread over the surface and onto the child.
Placemats made up of rubber like material (U.S. Pat. No. 6,746,745) are reusable but do not absorb spilled liquids. This causes concern when it is time to transport the placemat. The placemat must be cleaned before placed in a diaper bag, purse, or any other bag. This does not offer the convenience of being able to be folded quickly and place in said bag. This placemat also does not have straps to constrain a child's toy, pacifier, etc.